For three seasons on critically acclaimed hit The Bear, Ayo Edebiri has seen her ambitious and headstrong character, Sydney Adamu, climb the ranks from sous-chef in a struggling sandwich shop to second-in-charge in the chaotic kitchen of a fine-dining Chicago restaurant run by her troubled mentor, Carmy (played by Jeremy Allen White).
Where would she like to see Sydney go next?
“On vacation! That poor girl, she needs a break,” Ayo, 29, deadpanned to Deadline’s Crew Call podcast on June 2, 2025.
“In therapy – and then on the beach!”
There’ll be no such rest for Ayo. Even during her own recent month-long holiday to Asia, she conceived the idea to write a surrealist live-action Barney & Friends movie – based on the children’s TV purple dinosaur – which she pitched to Get Out star and director Daniel Kaluuya.
“I felt like that girl who takes a gap year,” she told WSJ magazine on June 4 of the project that Mattel Films and A24 have green-lit. “I was just thinking of, what are the movies that I want to make? What are the things that I want to do?”
Though The Bear put Ayo on the map, the Boston-born only daughter of immigrants – her mother is from Barbados, and her father is from Nigeria – has been working in the entertainment industry for several years as a stand-up comedienne, improv performer and writer for shows like Big Mouth and What We Do in the Shadows, later appearing on screen in a few episodes.
Her chemistry with her The Bear co-star Jeremy sizzled early on.
“When we started at culinary school, [Ayo and I] were instantly almost competitive with one another, which was very, very weird,” he explained to Variety in January 2023. “We didn’t really know each other. We’d met and we were excited to do the show, and then this quiet competition started to sort of impress our teacher. It was odd but worked for the show.”
Jeremy, who in real life has found love with his The Bear co-star Molly Gordon, continued that he is glad the relationship between Carmy and Sydney doesn’t lean romantic. “There’s admiration and I hope that even in platonic relationships, you are able to say things like, ‘I need you,’” he noted. “Syd and Carmy do things for one another. She is a source of peace and focus for him and, at times, he can be a source of inspiration and dependability.”
Ayo agrees. “Work can be a very intimate thing and a very personal thing and a very emotional thing, and I think when you’re also in industries that are creative or creative-adjacent, I think there’s something that also invokes feelings of passion,” she told Vanity Fair in May 2024 of how her real-life friendship with Jeremy spills over on screen. “Also, boy’s got some beautiful blue eyes. You know what I mean? Those are eyes you want to project onto.”
Whatever they’re doing, it’s working. The Bear has won a record-breaking 21 Emmys in total and Ayo, who has become a red-carpet favourite, has bagged an Emmy, a Golden Globe and two SAG Awards, as well as picking up a DGA Award for directing a Season 3 episode of the series.
Up next, she’s set to star in James L. Brooks’ dramedy Ella McCay and co-stars with Andrew Garfield and Julia Roberts in upcoming thriller After the Hunt.
In addition to writing an episode for Season 4 of The Bear, Edebiri is continuing to flex her behind-the-camera muscles as an executive producer of upcoming Apple TV+ romantic comedy Prodigies, which she’ll star in opposite The White Lotus’ Will Sharpe, who also created, writes and directs the seven-episode series.
Ayo says she can see a parallel between her career path and her character’s arc on The Bear.
“Sydney discovering that she actually is a good teacher and that she sees things in people that they might not see in themselves,” she told WSJ, “that’s actually something where I’m like, ‘I would like to do that more in my life.’”
The Bear Season 4 premieres Thursday, June 26, 2025 on Disney+.
